• Bring in outside food (Heck, Wagner said you can have a fancy picnic if you want.)

• Shake their bodies on the dance floor

“You can even dance where you are seated and no one is going to yell at you,” said Wagner, the executive director of Levitt Pavilion Dayton. “We are on a slope.”

The Levitt Pavilion Dayton will celebrate its opening with a concert on August 9, just a short fourteen months after getting the green light for the project in downtown Dayton. TY GREENLEES / STAFF
(Ty Greenlees)

Lawn seating will be able to accommodate as many as 5,000 people.

The outdoor amphitheater located adjacent to Crown Plaza hotel will offer 34 free concerts this week through Oct. 7 by a list of musicians known locally, nationally and internationally, playing a range of music that includes jazz, rock, blues, folk, R&B, country, pop, world and children’s music.

The Levitt Pavilion Dayton will celebrate its opening with a concert on August 9, just a short fourteen months after getting the green light for the project in downtown Dayton. TY GREENLEES / STAFF
(Ty Greenlees)

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK

Food will be available for purchase from food trucks during concerts and there will be beer and wine.

Wagner said downtown businesses plan to take advantage of the expected influx of people.

Third Perk Coffeehouse and Wine Bar, 46 E. Fifth St. near the Reibold Building garage, plans to sell single serving $5 plastic bulbs of wine and carry and go picnic packages to those heading to the concerts.

The picnic packs will include wine, sandwich wraps and other goodies for $10 each.

Juanita Darden-Jones, Third Perk’s owner and an advocate for downtown, has high hopes for the exposure and foot traffic possibilities the pavilion has for her businesses and those that surround it.

Wagner said Crafted and Cured, 531 Wayne Ave. in the Oregon District, for instance, will be selling crowlers of beer (32 ounce cans of beer) and artisan meat and cheese cones.

Downtown Dayton Partnership Executive Director Sandy Gudorf said downtown and Oregon District restaurants and brewpubs will be open for those hoping to grab a drink or a meal before or after the concerts.

She said the pavilion will be an economic boon for downtown Dayton, which has experienced steady growth in recent years.

It is an amenity that will help breweries, pubs and restaurants and will offer even more things for visitors and residents to experience, she said.

“It is about bringing more people downtown and getting them out exploring,” Gudorf said. “We are a community of small businesses. Venues like this draw people into (our) businesses. We see this as a unique opportunity, an economic driver to help our downtown businesses.”